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Monday, June 19, 2006

Check the Recent Posts at left, or go to this link to catch up on the previous numbers in this series about the proposed rapid transit Chicago's Circle line.We have talked about the section that would take the old Douglas Park "L" north to Lake Street on what used to be the Metropolitan West Side Elevated but is now known as the Paulina Connector. We have also talked about the section that would be new track from the south end of the north-south leg of the Douglas Park "L" south to Ashland-Archer on the Orange (Midway) Line. We have even talked about our suggested extension of this service to the old Stock Yards to Kenwood ROW along 40th Street to complete a true connection with most South Side transit routes.The North Side section, as originally proposed, seems the most problematic to us. (Problematic means that to choose this option means you will automatically have problems.)This proposal calls for the first two sections to link to the Red Line (State Street Subway) at North and Clybourn, a subway stop. The way to get there, according to the plan, is to build a subway from Ashland and Lake to North, then east to North and Clybourn.We get queasy when we try to think of how the planners are going to get trains from the "L" structure level at Paulina down to subway levels at Ashland, a distance of approximately 1/10 mile, but stranger things have been done in Chicago. (About a 60 foot drop in 530 feet is a whopping 11% grade.) That is, unless the planners are just going to stub-end the subway at Lake and make the passengers ride an escalator down. This part of the plan has the same problem that the South Side section has: It doesn't get anyone to the lakefront. It has another problem: We don't like riding trains in tubes.So far all of the rest of the line is on elevated ROW.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Around these parts, government has almost always built roads. Government has rarely built railroads, although it financed the early transcons. The trend for 60 years of the last century (1910s to 1970s) has always been for government to take over and/or subsidize more and more in the way of railroads. The granddaddy being Conrail, formed from Penn Central (itself a merger of New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad) and multiple bankrupt eastern railroads, and the grandmama being Amtrak. All the little siblings in the subsidy or takeover family were the middling to large commuter rail and transit companies that grew together under government sponsorship starting post-WWII. Nonetheless, the trand was to governmental subsidy, control and/or operation.Until now.The harbinger may have been the public sale of stock in Conrail circa 1987. The public got to buy what the public had already bought through taxes. In any case, this was followed by a period of prosperity for Conrail so great that major solvent railroads fought over control of it.

Monday, June 12, 2006

The TTC is something called the Trans-Texas Corridor, and, like Chicago's Circle line for rapid transit, it has several forms as initially proposed. We suppose that we are dealing with Texas here. (Most of those Texans still think that our side of the Rio Grande - we live in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights - belongs to Texas.) So a Texas Corridor is a particularly wide transportation corridor. We quote the Dallas Star-Telegram of May 21: Some stretches of TTC-35 might include -- within a broad corridor up to 1,200 feet wide -- separate lanes for passenger vehicles, 18-wheelers, freight trains and high-speed passenger rail and conduits for water lines, oil and natural gas pipelines, and transmission of electricity and broadband. Motorists would pay tolls to travel on the higher-speed corridor.TTC-35 would be the north-south corridor designed to relieve traffic along Interstate 35 and in and around Dallas, Waco, Austin, and San Antonio. It would begin at the Oklahoma border and run to the Mexican border. An east-west TTC is also proposed, possibly running north or south of Dallas, but in any event from New Mexico to Louisiana or Arkansas. What happens at the borders? We don't know, but try to imagine. A quarter mile's width of semis, trains, and pipelines would have to squeeze into some pretty narrow rights of way.That's why we propose that New Mexico, at least, participate in the TTC. We could call it the Trans-New Mexico Texas Corridor or TNMTC. Somehow, we just don't want all that traffic piled up in Clovis, Roswell, or San Jon. Okay, maybe Tucumcari, which is possibly the world's most populated ghost town, but not San Jon. (San Jon is a great little town in eastern New Mexico south of Interstate 40 on a 4-lane that used to be Route 66.)Then when the traffic gets to Arizona, it can just spill out onto the desert and stay there.In any case, Trans-Whatever Texas-Sized corridors are the next big thing, and passenger rail will be better for them. If they catch on, they could be as abundant as Interstate highways (whether that is a good thing or not) and abundantly more useful if properly designed. That means designed with the hindsight to see that the Interstate Highway System, designed in the 1950s to take automobile transport into the next century, only barely made it; and most had to be extensively rebuilt before 2001; and those probably won't make it to 2020.So let's put at least two Trans-State (lets call them Texas-Style, for their size) Corridors in each state: one north-south and one east-west. And let's reserve a high-speed, well-signaled, double track main line for Passenger Rail on each and every one of them. (You know we will have to shoot or hang all the NIMBYs and the BANANAs or send them to France to do this, don't you?)And if we had our 'druthers, we wouldn't build a single square inch of asphalt on 'em for the truckers. Give them the Ancient Interstates and let the truckers maintain 'em from revenues for awhile.Everybody will start to appreciate rail tranportation, and Passenger Rail, a whole lot more.Please read and participate in our sister blog, The Railroad.

Monday, June 05, 2006

We have been discussing the proposal for a rapid transit Circle Line to make connections with (and cross) all existing bus and rail routes in the city.So far, under this title, we have discussed the renovation and reopening of the Paulina Connector so that the Douglas Line (Blue Line) can connect with the Lake Street (Green) Line again. (See this link.) We have also discussed the section of the Circle that would be a new line connecting the Douglas Line with the Midway Line (Orange). (See this link.) We haven't gotten to the third part of the original proposal for the Circle Line. (Will they call it the Rainbow Line?)Aside: We have been doing a little research. Both the Douglas Line and the Paulina Connector were once part of a greater system built as the Metropolitan West Side Elevated. This system began (or ended) at a terminal on Franklin Street just east of the South Branch of the Chicago River and continued west on a four-track structure to the current alignment of the Paulina Connector/Douglas north-south leg. There, trains could proceed west on the Garfield Line (no longer there but rebuilt as the Congress [also Blue] Line). Trains could turn south on the Douglas, or they could turn north on the Connector and go to the Logan Square Line (also Blue today) which also had a branch to Humboldt Park. Aside #2: Although using the "old" names for the lines seems to date us, can you see how just using the color names would be confusing?

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Happy to write something about any subject. Strong political conservative but not far right. Marketing a number of novels I have written and writing more. Check out my blogs and other writing on my Author Website